dead media
A Prehistory of Twitter
Every new media retrieves an archetype of a dead one. With the fuss over social presence at the moment, I recalled to how I first tried to achieve twitter. Twitter for me retrieves my very first blog which was nothing more than a log of msn messenger handles. And one point, there was even a semi-functional rss feed of this thanks to Michael Aird. Little personal moments at 80 characters or less (Twitter is generous by comparison).
A time capsule, after the jump:
Twittering the whispering revolution
Twitter is a massive signal. It’s still at least half kludgy, it’s nowhere near end-state but – the idea is going to be big. I’ve been thinking of this signal since in came across strongly in my Dead Media workshop at Lift07. But in just the last few weeks Twitter has so exploded that we [...]
Vista’s DRM mistake, and the decline of Microsoft Windows
Microsoft introduces Vista to area bloggers, Nov. 2006 “Microsoft Corp. shares fell as much as 2.7 percent on Friday, their biggest drop in nine months, after Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said analysts’ forecasts for fiscal 2008 revenue for Windows Vista were “overly aggressive.” Microsoft shares tumble on CEO comments -CNNMoney “A new study by Jupiter [...]
LIFTconference day 0: Dead Media Workshop
“McLuhan believed that all media forms are extensions of our senses, bodies, and psyches, in the way that a hammer is an extension of our hand and a book is an extension of our memory and ideas. As such, they intensify one thing in culture while obsolescing something else.” – The Imagination Challenge, pg 130
Today thanks to social media, other new innovations and 2.0 everything, we are at the point of explosion of new media in society. In the spirit of “the medium is the message”, how are/will these new media be transforming and being reflected in the structure of society itself, both in our social sphere as well as change to the nature and nvironment of work? (wow, there’s a sentence). This is the workshop I had the forture to lead at LIFT with a group of very bright people. But istead of just looking at the new media we examine these media through he lense of what they displace. What plethora of old/current media should we now consider “dead”. What are the historical precidents?
more after the jump…
Brilliantly, Norway makes iTunes (DRM) illegal
In a bold move against iTunes’ DRM, called Fairplay, the Norwegian Consumer Council has deemed it illegal in Norway, with France and Germany possibly following suit. If only our policy makers had one iota of this imagination. The message Ottawa need to clue in to: 1. Digital protectionism is not how you promote culture 2. [...]
The revolution will not be tactile
Alex said something brilliant (as he sometimes does) the other day. He was answering a question from an architecht on the Imagination Challenge. Roughly, the answer went: With each major shift in society there is something different in centre of the wheel that is driving the change. This time it’s digital and it’s social. No, [...]
Thomas Purves
is a technology executive specializing digital payment systems, a futurist and sometimes entrepreneur living in the great city of 
